Searchbase

SEARCHBASE is a self-hosted, highly efficient, privacy-focused Search Engine designed explicitly for AI Agents and LLMs.

It natively supports the Model Context Protocol (MCP), making it a plug-and-play web search tool for LLM UIs like Claude Desktop, Cursor, OpenWebUI, Opencode, and Neovim CodeCompanion.

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🎯 The Mission

In an era where Big AI companies profit from your data and gatekeep intelligence behind expensive token economies, privacy and autonomy have become luxury commodities. While small, local LLMs have the potential to be incredibly powerful, they are currently tethered to proprietary search APIs that demand high subscriptions and offer zero transparency regarding what happens to your queries or agent interactions.

Searchbase is built to break this cycle.

Searchbase mission is to provide a sovereign, privacy-first search layer that enables any LLM, regardless of size, to access the live web with maximum efficiency and zero dependency on corporate gatekeepers. Searchbase turns the web into a clean, token-optimized stream of knowledge, ready for your context window.

This repository is my independent open-source project. It will remain separate from any managed cloud service I may build around it.

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📚 Read the Full Documentation

All documentation is available on the dedicated documentation site. Please visit docs.searchbase.md for:

• Installation & Getting Started
• MCP Integration Guides (OpenWebUI, Claude, Cursor, Opencode, Neovim CodeCompanion)
• REST API Reference
• Configuration & Architecture
• Self-hosting and fetch-worker comparison
• Development, contribution, and isolated load-testing instructions
• Contributing and CLA information

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🎯 Quick Start

Docker Compose

git clone https://github.com/coolapso/searchbase.git
cd searchbase
docker compose -f examples/compose/docker-compose.native.yml up

The Gateway will be available at http://localhost:8080.

examples/compose/ and examples/k8s/ contain user-facing demos; the Kubernetes examples offer Crawl4AI or experimental Lightpanda as the fetch worker. dev/compose/ contains checkout-built development and load-test stacks. These examples are not production deployment templates. See the Documentation Site for backend-specific examples and self-hosting notes.

An experimental Go-wrapped Lightpanda fetch worker is available through examples/compose/docker-compose.lightpanda.yml; the default worker remains Crawl4AI. See the self-hosting documentation for deployment behavior and configuration.

Fetch worker comparison

Choose the worker that best fits your deployment. In a saved local JavaScript fixture run with the previous pinned nightly (4 worker CPUs, 2 GiB limit), the gateway completed at least 15.46 fetches/s with Lightpanda at the test ceiling, versus 6.73 fetches/s with Crawl4AI. This is a one-host result, not production capacity; the 0.4.1 release has not been benchmarked here. Crawl4AI remains the default and supports optional JavaScript through js_render; Lightpanda always runs JavaScript. See the comparison.

Development

The development documentation covers checkout-built stacks, contributions, and isolated load testing. The load-test stack uses local deterministic fixtures and saves reports under loadtest/results/.

⚖️ License

Searchbase is dual-licensed under the GNU AGPLv3 and a Commercial License.

Please see the Documentation Site for full details on the business model and license terms.

If you like this project and want to support / contribute in a different way you can always ❤️ Sponsor Me or